Construction of a index to measure community participation in development projects

There is ample evidence that the best results are obtained in development programs when the target community gets involved in their implementation and/or operation. The evidence is mostly qualitative, however, since there are no methods for measuring this participation quantitatively. In this paper we present a procedure for generating an aggregate index of community participation based on productivity. It is specifically aimed at measuring community participation in the construction of works for collective benefit. Because there are limitations on the information available, additional assumptions must be made to estimate parameters, The method is applied to data from communities in Mexico participating in a national nutrition, food and health program.